Stage of Love
by Wintertime
Summary: [GSR] "But the stages of grief were wrong. In their chain of progression, they left no room for love."


STAGE OF LOVE

NOTES: Angsty, angsty GSR one-shot. No character death, but more like - - Character Dying? Oh, sure, now I'm just _inventing _sub-genres. If this works correctly, you'll cry. I believe in warning people ahead of time about my intentions.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own CSI, Grissom, Sara, or any of the other characters. I just shamelessly use/abuse them for my own pleasure and that of others, receiving no profit. Talk to CBS about that.

- - - - -

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

- - Henry David Thoreau

- - - - -

The first thing she said was, "Don't think that this is about you."

"I don't think that," he said automatically.

Sara's wedding dress was the color of snow. Grissom tried to remember if he'd ever seen snow, and couldn't come up with an answer. He probably had, at some point, but faced with the bleak, expansive whiteness of Sara's dress, this was the only snow he had. He could still picture the veil over her face - - a snowflake hiding her features - - and how eagerly his fingers had drawn back the lace. His hands had made snow angels on her back when they had danced. The blue winter roses at her throat and her wrist.

She held up the dress. These days, it would be too big for her. He touched the sleeve, and the silk was slippery against his skin.

"I love you," she said, "but that's not why I wanted you to bring me this. I could always remember our wedding without using a prop." She smiled wearily. "No one forgets the best day of their life."

He held her hand. He could feel the bones in her fingers. The sensation was unsettling, but her skin was warm.

"The best day of your life?"

"Didn't your mother ever tell you that it's rude to go fishing for compliments?" She pulled the dress up onto the bed completely, and her stray hand glided over the surface, flitting between the ties on the back and around the neat, tight seams. "You know that you were the best thing to ever happen to me."

"I never knew I could be so valuable," he said. "I always just thought I was lucky to have caught you."

"Poetic till the end," Sara said, shaking her head. "Well, _an _end, anyway. Do you want to know why I needed to see this dress?"

He could taste the saltiness of his own tears on his lips. "Why did you want the dress, Sara?"

"I wanted to remember being beautiful," she said simply. "We were beautiful that day, Grissom. We were so happy. I remember that I could even make you laugh back then - - I can't make you laugh now, can I?" Her eyes fixed on one of his tears as it landed on the dress. "Now, I only make you cry. That's quite a switch."

"It's not your fault," he said.

"Well, you're right about that. No one expects to get sick." Her smile wavered. "And no one wants to die."

"You aren't going to _die_," he said, trying to make that very thought sound ridiculous, but he couldn't. The hysterical shrillness in his voice took away any reassurance he had meant to offer. Because by now, they both knew the truth. Sara was going to die. He had loved her and married her, but he hadn't been able to save her, not when it really counted. You couldn't save someone from themselves.

All the crimes he'd prevented. He should have been a doctor. Then maybe he could have done something other than watch her waste away.

"So I wanted to remember being beautiful," she said, "because I'm not anymore."

"You'll always be beautiful."

When she smiled, he could see the cracks in her chapped lips. "Grissom, Grissom. What do you see when you look at me? Be honest."

He looked and looked.

"Sara," he said honestly, "I can't see you as anything other than beautiful. I'll _never _be able to see you as anything other than beautiful. I don't need a wedding dress to see who you are. I have you memorized." He smiled and stroked her hand. "You still surprise me, but I keep adding things to my list. 'What I Know About Sara'. I'll always know you."

"I don't even know me anymore."

"Now who's fishing for compliments?"

"Guilty as charged," she said. "But I don't believe you. I don't feel beautiful." Her smile widened, and, cracked lips or not, she _was _still beautiful, she _was _still lovely. "Or is that just the morphine talking, doctor?"

He laughed. He hadn't meant to laugh, but he had laughed. He was still crying, but she had made him laugh.

She was dying, and she was the one who was cheering him up.

"There," she said, satisfied. "I missed making you laugh."

"I missed laughing," he admitted. "But I should be making you happy, not the other way around."

"Cheap shot. Let's not discriminate on the basis of health, okay? Besides, you brought me the dress, and that was what I wanted, and you brought you, and that was what I needed." She looked around the room. "People keep bringing me things I _don't _need. Nick brought me flowers. Catherine brought all these cocoa mixes. Warrick put all those pictures on the wall, all the ones I asked him for. Greg bought me a _Playstation 2_, if you can believe that. Must have set him back at least two hundred, with all the extra games. And I like it all, but I don't need it all. I just need you."

"You have me," he said.

"Then I'll be okay," she said. "Dead or alive, I'll be okay."

"I hate it when you talk about it like it's inevitable," he said. "It's _not. _We could still fix this. There could still be something - - anything - - There could still be a way to make this nothing . . ."

"Stages of grief, Grissom. Denial, bargaining, anger, despair, acceptance. I've accepted. You're the one who hasn't been grieving for me yet. Still stuck in denial."

"I'm not going to grieve for what's right in front of me."

"And here comes the jump from denial all the way to anger."

"No, Sara," he said. "If I'm anywhere, I think I'm in despair. Have some mercy."

"My poor Grissom. I wish it weren't this hard for you. I'm sorry." She ran her thumb around one of the buttons on the wedding dress. "You want to bring in your tux next time, and we can really sink into the nostalgia?"

"Honey, don't."

"Do you know what I want right now, more than anything?"

It was a question that he thought he could answer.

"To be out of bed. To be home. To be working. To be back in that wedding dress. Tell me, Sara."

"I want to see you smiling," she said. She laughed. "I know it's stupid. I know it's sappy. I'm lying here, dying, with IVs stuck in me and doctors hovering around - - only allowed to see my husband twice a day and my friends once a week - - playing Resident Evil to pass the time - - and I'm probably not going to see July. And all I really want is for _you _to be happy."

"Really selfish of you," he said. He was crying again. "I wish you'd make a wish for yourself, Sara."

"I'll wish for you, you wish for me."

"Thus are the bonds of matrimony."

"Shakespeare?"

"I have no idea," he said. "It just rhymed. I was carried away by the moment."

"Do I make you happy, Grissom?"

"Sara Sidle Grissom," he said, "in all the time I've known you, you've made me frustrated, angry, hopeless, passionate, resentful, poetic, blind, unfair, cruel, heartbroken, jealous, lovesick, tongue-tied, and just . . . crazy. And now, right here, right at this moment, you want to know if you make me _happy_?"

"Yeah, I do. Tell me."

"You make me happy," he said. "God help me, you've always made me happy. You're the only person who can do that to me."

"Good," she said. "I'd hate to have to get territorial on your ass."

He held her hand over the wedding dress, their fingers knotted.

"I wish I could bring you home, at least," he said. "I wish they'd let me do that. I've asked a hundred times."

"I've _heard _you asking," she said dryly. "You and Warrick and Nick and Greg, all out in the front yelling at the doctors that I should get to go to my own damn house. You actually curse like a sailor when you put your mind to it, Mr. Grissom. I was impressed."

"Everyone else was cursing," Grissom said. "I didn't want to be left out."

"A couple physical impossibilities in yours, though, but I'm not picky." She smiled as he kissed her hand. "It's okay, Grissom, really. I'm fine here. I have pictures, forensic textbooks, and a Playstation. Even the sheets are softer than you'd expect."

"And now you have your wedding dress."

"And now I have my wedding dress," Sara agreed. "So tell me what's on your mind, Grissom, because we've gone all over my thoughts by now and I'm a little sick of them myself."

"What am I thinking?"

"Yeah. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking I want to break you out of here. I want to have a picnic with you, because I was just starting to realize that I'd never had a picnic before, and I was thinking how nice it would be to sit on a checkered blanket in some meadow and eat lunch with you."

"While you collect bugs."

"Of course," he said. "While I collect bugs, and you bring out burned cookies because you _still _can't cook - -"

"Hey!"

"The honest truth, Sara. So - - sure. I want to have a picnic with you."

"I'd like that," she said. "We should have one."

He sighed and absently wiped his eyes. They were dry now, but he was so used to crying over her that he couldn't tell anymore. He stared at his hand in bemusement, and then tucked it back down on the dress to join hers.

"And how, Sara? Spread a blanket over the bed?"

Her eyes were closed. "I've had picnics before, Grissom. Want me to tell you about one of them?"

"Sure, honey," he said. He couldn't close his eyes. Couldn't block out his vision of her, broken and still so lovely, concentrating on the perfect vision. She was _his _perfect vision, and he wouldn't close his eyes to block her out. "Tell me what it would be like."

"It's just the two of us," she began. "There were other picnics where everyone came, but for now, it's just us. We're out by Lake Mead, sitting on that stupid plaid blanket you got in Mexico. Cold ham sandwiches for you and egg salad sandwiches for me. It's sunny. I'm warm again, and I haven't been really warm for a long time. It feels good. The wind off the lake is spectacular."

"Sounds like heaven."

"Very close," Sara said, smiling, her eyes still closed. "We're both drinking beer."

"No lemonade?"

"We're grownups. We have beer. Don't mess with my fantasies, Grissom. And besides, I'm the one with the picnic-experience. Just listen."

"Whatever you say."

"That's more like it. We keep getting ants crawling up our picnic basket, and you won't kill them. You keep feeding them instead. Sticky trails of chocolate icing off your fingertips." She was starting to cry. With a start, Grissom realized that this was the first time he'd seen Sara cry since she'd been in the hospital. If she'd cried before, she'd done it away from him, muffled the sound into a pillow, and rinsed the tears off her face with soap and water. She'd always shown him nothing but smiles and wry comments, comforting him when she was the one who should've been vulnerable. She unraveled before him, and he found himself squeezing her hand tightly as she continued.

"Remember, before, we were talking about having a baby?"

"Yeah," he said. They'd discussed it. Planned Parenthood. The options of them brining a child into the world. How a baby would fit in with work and their hectic schedules. They'd planned and talked and had been on the verge of deciding when Sara got sick. "I remember."

"Well, I'm pregnant. At our picnic."

"Hey," he said. "Then no beer for you."

"Right," she said. "I guess we get your lemonade after all, Grissom. A thermos of the stuff, in the cooler. When you put your hand on my belly, you can feel the baby move."

She opened her eyes. She was still Sara, still strong. Her eyes were clear and brilliant, compassionate, and wiser than he'd ever really recognized.

"I wish we could have done that," she said. "I miss all those picnics we didn't have."

Sara held the wedding dress up against her one more time, her hands stroking the fabric.

"We had us, though," she said. "I'm glad we had that. I'm glad we _have _that. I couldn't get through this without you, Grissom. I'd be gone already." She handed him the dress. "Take it, okay? I don't want to look that pathetic. Cuddling my wedding dress like a teddy bear."

"You could never look pathetic," he said, but he took it anyway, because Sara wanted him to.

She'd said that she'd needed it to remember that she had ever been beautiful. Grissom knew what Sara saw when she looked into the mirror - - a body too thin with skin too sallow, the life draining out one day at a time, one hour weakening her more and more. But he didn't see that. He could never gather up the strength to see her objectively. She hadn't ever needed a prop to remember their wedding, and he hadn't ever needed a prop to see that, underneath the skin, she was still his Sara.

"I'm pretty tired, Grissom," she said honestly. "These drugs make me sleepy."

"I'll stay here until you fall asleep," he said, and kissed her on the cheek. "I love you. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Love you, too," she said, closing her eyes.

It only took her a few minutes to drop away into sleep - - the medications probably did cause excessive drowsiness. And besides, she needed her sleep. Grissom held her wrist until he was sure that he could still feel her pulse, weak but persistent, under her skin, and kissed her again. Rituals to make sure that she was still alive, because he was so afraid that one day he would kiss her goodbye and her skin would be cool to the touch, and his searching fingers would find silence in her wrist and neck. That there would be no response when he shook her, no answer when he said her name - -

He started to take the wedding dress with him, but he draped it over the spare chair instead. If she wanted it again, it would be there for her to see: a mirror back through time, to a better time.

Sara's stages of grief were wrong:

Denial, bargaining, anger, despair, acceptance.

He knew denial - - how many times had he told himself that this wasn't real? And he knew bargaining - - his first prayer in oh-so-many years: Take me, not her. He knew anger - - shouting at the doctors to give her back to him, to at least let her die in their own house. And God only knew how well he understood despair.

He had never reached acceptance.

But the stages were wrong, they were not valid. In their chain of progression, they left no room for love.

There was nothing there to explain Sara's wedding dress, and their phantom picnic by the lake. There was no stage where he could fit that stupid Playstation and the pictures on Sara's walls. No words for how she was still beautiful to him, no reasoning that would tell him why he checked her so carefully for signs of life.

Instead of placing his hand on the doorknob, he sat down quietly in the chair next to her bed. He would watch her sleep, neither despairing nor accepting, because he was still in love.


End file.
